Christ The Servant
Catholic Church
Cold Springs, Ontario
Homily Selections
JOY
Every year, on the Third Sunday of Advent we are asked to do a meditation on Joy. That seems like a curious thing to ask, though it becomes less curious when we actually reflect on the nature of joy.
Christ the Servant radiates Joy and that is so very obvious to anyone who is with us. The joy of our community is real and generous and contagious . We all feel it and bathe in it’s blessing
Where does our joy come from?
I have always believed that the great truths in life are simple.In preparing for this Homily, I did a lot of thinking, spoke to a lot of people, conducted some research, and plagiarized some good stuff . I came to the conclusion that few things are as misunderstood as the notion of joy. Of itself that wouldn’t be serious except that in this case we can be often left chasing the wrong things in life.
Too often we confuse joy with good cheer or with a certain rallying of the spirit that we try to crank up when we go to a party or let off steam on a Friday night. We tend to think of joy this way: There is ordinary time in our lives, when duty, work, emotional and financial burdens, tiredness, worries and pressure of all kinds keep us from enjoying life and from being as cheery and pleasant as we would like. We think of ordinary times in our lives as keeping us from joy...the grind, the routine, the rat-race the work week and so we look forward to special times, weekends, nights out,vacation times. Social times, celebrations and parties where we can break routine, break out, enjoy ourselves and experience joy
Joy then is identified with the boisterous good cheer we try to crank up at parties or the lack of pressure and freedom from burdens that we feel when on vacation But is this joy? It can be though often isn’t That’s why the good cheer dissolves so quickly when we go home and why three days after returning from vacation we are again just as tired and in need of a vacation
I had always thought of joy as the top drawer of happiness Gradually I came to the realization that there is a significant and substantial difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is primarily internal. We can see happiness in other people and we can be happy for them. Joy cannot remain internal. It radiates out to everyone, and at the same time it remains within us..
When I spoke to my daughter in law about joy, she said” That’s simple, just look atJaden!! This is Jaden, my twenty month old grand daughter. She owns my heart and is a beautiful joyful baby but in and of herself she isn’t joy.
What is joy? Joy can never be induced, cranked up,manufactured or made to happen. ( Although if the Calgary Flames win the Stanley cup, that would come close)
Joy walks with wisdom, understanding, creativity , faith and hope. It is infectious and contagious.
In September I attended a one day charismatic conference in Oakville. Like many of you I was uncomfortable with charismatics. even frightened by them. I needed to find out why. I had a leg up because my sister had been granted the gift of tongues while she walked her last journey in life and I had the experience of witnessing the incredible peace and joy of her charismatic prayer group.My sister, who was just as strong willed and pig headed as I am trapped me into attending at this group because she wanted to share what she had found. I found the experience awesome, knew it was real and beautiful and it set off a longing in me but Still I was not comfortable.
What I found in Oakville was the same incredible peace and joy amongst the 1000 people who attended that day.It was very powerful And so I spoke with Fr. Peter Coglin, the parish priest of St. Andrew’s church in Oakville who led the conference and asked him why charismatics have such a lock on joy..Fr. Coglin explained eloquently that what I had witnessed was the presence of the Holy Spirit . He said that baptism in the Spirit produces a joy, peace and enthusiasm that is vibrant and alive within us, and once there it stays. He spoke of a “slumbering spirit within us that needs to be awakened and can be by surrendering and seeking the grace of the Spirit.....and isn’t that what we’re about?...seeking the grace of the spirit?
So, we need to chill out about charismatics, and not be frighted by them
And we need to recognize and respect their joy. By different paths we are all seeking the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Joy feels like this: we fill with a sense of life and health, in some inchoate way, all jumbled together, you feel your body mind, soul, gender, history, place within a family, network of friends,church, city and country and this feeling makes you spontaneously exclaim “God, it’s good to be alive!” That’s joy
And, as CS Lewis puts it, it has to surprise you. You can’t find joy, it has to find you. That’s it’s real quality. And it finds us precisely within our ordinary, duty bound , burdened, full of worries and pressured lives.
Joy is always the by-product of something else. We can never attain joy, consolation, peace, forgiveness, love and understanding by actively pursuing them We attain them by giving them out. That’s the great paradox at the centre of all spirituality and one of the great foundational truths within the universe itself. The air we breathe out is the air we eventually breathe back in.
Joy will come to us if we set about actively trying to create it for others.
And how do we do that?
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen .
This is where joy lives and when we go there Joy washes over us like a Spiritual Tsunami.
The great truths really are simple.
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